Just got it and I must say I am proud of my beast machine. My roommate Pelordaes is needing to upgrade his computer though, as this game firmly bursts the 2 ghz border.
EVERYTHING has improved since Morrowind! The graphics now soundly whoop the likes of Guild Wars and Quake 4, with lush animations so incredible that one questions reality. I was blown away in the 1st 5 minutes when I found a sledgehammer and fought a rat... as it's bloated underbelly exposed in his lunge at me, I swung verilly with mine hammer, connecting the blunt solidly with the center mass of the leaping rat... The rat's body *bent* around the surface of the hammer as it was *launched* into the cavern wall with a splattering bounce. I then beat down a goblin and crouched over him, setting down my hammer. Cursing wildly at the little green man, every punch I connected on his lifeless face made his head roll around lifelessly with such attention to physics, I sat amazed for well over 10 minutes.
The old Morrowind exploits are a bit better... now NPCs follow you when you walk upstairs in their house, you HAVE to be in the thieves guild to find a decent fence, the oceans aren't all one big pearl factory, you can't become an archmagus overnight by shooting a fireball in the sky... etc etc.
NPC interaction... THEY NOW TALK!!! EVERY ONE OF THEM!!!!! The NPCS are finally memorable, every last one of them, with detailed facial expressions, quirks, quests and stories of their own... a vast improvement from the cookie cutter conversation text boxes of Morrowind. The face to face interaction reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic in it's style, but with a special sub-game for speachcraft which helps change their attitude towards you. Many NPCS also join you in combat for some quests, and there are books in the game detailing the tactics of grouping... making me think that Elder Scrolls Online might just be in the works...
Alchemy too is a little easier since when you put an ingredient in the 1st slot, when you choose one for the second slot, it will highlight all the other ingredients that are possible to combine into a potion. Also, unlike before where you could combine anything you technically shouldn't know about, it won't let you make the best potions out there until you reach a high enough lvl of alchemy.
Combat, aside from being more fluent this time, is also more action paced. Before you would just keep charging into something... stab stab stab stab. Now there's kickback from your weapons, and the right mouse button raises the shield manually for blocking checks. With large weapons like hammers and axes, the blows will send te enemies reeling, though take off hige chunks of your fatigue meter. When each type of weapon skill reaches a certain threshold, you gain new power moves for the blade. Axes and hammers can disarm people, knock them back and unconscious, Blades are a bit quicker with more likelihood of instadeath and bleeding, archery can paralyze an opponent at grandmaster lvl, etc etc. These moves and abilities on top of the new power attacks (hold down attack and you use more fatigue for stronger blows) make Oblivion about on par with Fable for action-rpg hackfactor... a little better because I like unlocking special moves.
Overall, it feels like the Elder Scroll crew watched very closely the releases of Fable, Gothics I & II, Knights of the Old Republic, Vampire: Bloodlines and all the other amazing RPGs released in the past 3 years and took only the best qualities from them to be assembled into their already amazing morrowind engine.
So if I vanish for awhile... you know where I am.
